Video: TB patient says he was never a threat

ATLANTA — The family of a lawyer with a rare strain of tuberculosis released part of a tape recording Wednesday in which a health official is heard saying the man was not contagious and didn’t need to be isolated.

Andrew Speaker, the subject of the first federal quarantine order since 1963, has maintained that officials never ordered him not to fly before he left for his wedding and honeymoon in Europe. Officials say he flouted their orders, and Congress is investigating how officials handled the situation.

On CNN’s “Larry King Live,” Speaker — talking from his Denver hospital room — said he had known since an X-ray in January that he had TB and had been taking a combination of four standard drugs to treat it.

Just before a May 10 meeting at which the tape was made, he said, he had learned that the bacteria in his lung were resistant to at least two of the drugs and that he would need special treatment at the Denver hospital.

In the tape recording — made by Speaker’s father, Ted, also a lawyer — the patient asks about the hospital’s accommodations.

“Now, that I don’t know,” says Dr. Eric Benning, medical director of the Fulton County health department. “But because of the fact that you actually are not contagious, there’s no reason for you to be sequestered.”

At another point on the tape, Benning says: “As far as we can tell, you are not a threat to anybody right now.”